7th Sept 2021 - New Moon and Clear Sky? Surely not?

[MercianDabbler]

A lovely night last night. It's been a while since I've been out but last night was a new moon and was showing as wall to wall green on Clear Outside so it would have been rude not to. Things still seemed very hazy though.

I decided to get the SP102 out and set up the RA drive so that I could take some photos. I set up around 9PM. With the house fully opened up to try to cool things down and most of the lights off I decided to start off with Jupiter and drag my wife and son away from their activities for a look. I put the 15mm Vixen SLV onto the scope which gave a nice balance between fitting the scene in and being able to see some detail on Jupiter's disc. To begin with we could see only three of the four Galilean moons with Gannymeade and Callisto close together and Io on the opposite side. The tablet version of Stellarium was also showing Europa closer in than Io but it was not visible... and then it was. Checking the desktop Stellarium, it seems that it came out of shadow around 21:42. My wife was happy to have seen Europa reappear before I did.

Saturn was already behind a tree so I thought I'd shoot for another easy to find target - M57 and share that view with the Mrs before the attention span expired. That worked to plan as well. Having found it using the piggybacked ST80 I tried the 9mm DeLite in the SP102 but could not really get the nearby stars sharp so I went back to the 15mm SLV which was still enough for us to make out the doughut shape.

Once the view sharing was over I moved on to taking some photos. For this I was piggybacking my Canon 70D and a 135mm Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens that I picked up very cheaply on eBay. I also (finally) managed to get Wifi working between the camera and tablet so that I could preview the photos on the tablet screen. I really should have done this ages ago but it's one more thing to set up and my single previous attempt did not work.

I had a couple of photographic targets, both at high altitude angles to minimise the haze... the first was an attempt to get the whole of Lyra into one frame. Stellarium indicated that it would fit if the orientation was favourable and I think I managed it but have not yet downloaded the pictures. I took a few frames of Lyra and then pointed at the Veil Nebula. I took a lot more frames here but could not see the nebula in the previews. Whether it will show up after stacking remains to be seen. I started packing up around 23:40.

While the camera was clicking away I was sat in a garden chair just enjoying the unassisted view of Cygnus and the aroma of the night scented stock in the garden. All in all a very pleasant evening to be out.

[MercianDabbler]

The pic of Lyra. A single 30 second frame at f8 and 1600 ISO. Cropped maybe 20% from the height and a bit less from the width. I just about got the double double in... in spite of forgetting to check it when getting my aim sorted on the night. M57 is there at the bottom too.

I don't think it would impress many non-astronomers but I like it anyway. Once again the Sonnar has produced some err... dtstinctive... patterns around the brighter stars.

The veil nebula pic was more of a disappointment. I could make out a couple of traces of the nebula after stacking and stretching... but only if I know exactly where to look for it. Clearly a lot more than 25 mins of exposure time needed.

 

[Astro Waves]

If you're after the Veil you do need quite a bit of time on it really. Even with an astro modded camera you might still struggle to make it out for framing if you're just relying on using the camera alone, even with a a couple minute exposures. Its one of the nebulas that really caught my attention before delving into AP so I want to revisit it again but I'd really like to get minimum of about 5 hours data on it probably more really. 

Stick at it though, its a rewarding target because it looks ace and is also a tad tricky.

[MercianDabbler]

9 hours ago, Astro Waves said:

If you're after the Veil you do need quite a bit of time on it really. Even with an astro modded camera you might still struggle to make it out for framing if you're just relying on using the camera alone, even with a a couple minute exposures. Its one of the nebulas that really caught my attention before delving into AP so I want to revisit it again but I'd really like to get minimum of about 5 hours data on it probably more really. 

Stick at it though, its a rewarding target because it looks ace and is also a tad tricky.

Thanks. Actually I think I am getting the hang of framing with the piggybacked camera a little better - having the image preview on the tablet is a huge help and I can then compare the star field with Stellarium even if I can't see the nebula. I guess I can add more frames another evening - this area of sky does have the advantage of being well positioned for a long time.

[Astro Waves]

Being able to preview the image on something bigger than the back of the camera is the best advantage you can give yourself. As you said, if you can compare the star field or do a bit of plate solving then you should be onto a winner. Shooting over multiple nights is something I always have to contend with living in Scotland, if you do this just try and get it as close to the previous framing as you can do just to give you self a wider field of view to play with if cropping into the image is needed.